Recent Comments:

I must admit that I'm not familiar with the particulars of Germany's treason legislation. Does intent not play a role? Or whether the act was committed alone or in concert with someone?
Both of these could be used as justification. And that assumes good faith on part of the prosecutor. Which would be silly.

it does but is totally irrelevant in this case. the treason is the act of publishing and that is not in dispute. you don't need anything and certainly not VDS to find out anything about the ´facts of the case. The facts are not in dispute. the legal interpretation of these facts are.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Malaysian officials said Sunday that they would seek help from territories near the island where a suspected piece of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was discovered to try to find more plane debris.

A new piece of debris, meanwhile, found on Sunday on the French island of Reunion in the western Indian Ocean turned out to be a "domestic ladder," and doesn't belong to a plane, Malaysian Director General of Civil Aviation Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press amid media reports that a new plane part was found.

Malaysian government officials will ask territories near Reunion to alert them if they find any debris that could be from a plane, a transport ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

Beachcombers have been searching the island shores ever since the flap discovery a couple of days ago, turning up all kind of junk, but no other aircraft part.

I've been disappointed that Jeremy Corbyn doesn't seem to have made the leap yet.

His views are quite clearly evolving as we go through the selection process as they're more thoroughly tested by exposure, so we might get to an interesting position on Europe. that said, Europe is such a hornets nest for UK pols that he'd probably prefer to stick to domestic stuff for now.

the border of France is the bottom of Sicily, Greece and Malta. This is an issue that has been ignored since Schengen came into being and it's about time the northern EU started wondering about effective policies to cope/deal with migration.

I still think that putting more effort into helping the countries we destroy would be far more effective than fences to prevent the inevitable refugees coming to us. Maybe we might think twice before destroying countries in future.

40 years ago, for all that we thought of ourselves as the free and liberal West, if you upset the military - espionage complex, then you could more or less expect to go to jail. Democratic accountability nd public interest be damned, there was vast profit to be made and nothing could interfere with it.

Even the guy who leaked the Pentagon papers was charged and probably would have gone down for deep time if the Nixon administration hadn't imploded over Watergate, leading to the charges being dropped.

It shows we have come some way that we are now disappointed in our administrations that they wish to pursue people who clearly acted in the public interest, but I expect we'll see more of this as governments work together to eradicate this democratic menace

The Greek government produced a contingency plan that would "raise the cost of rupture" for Greece's creditors - the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monteryary Fund - if the country was forced out of the eurozone, according to a report published by Greek daily "Efimerida Ton Syntakton" on Saturday.

Citing Greek government officials under condition of anonymity, Efimerida Ton Syntakton reported that the plan included opening corruption probes into prominent German companies, including Siemens, Lidl, Allians, MAN and Hochtief.

"In basketball terms, the government would apply 'pressure defense,'" the Greek periodical said.

According to "Efimerida Ton Syntakton," the plan also included nationalizing Greece's gaming monopoly OPAP, which was privatized in 2013.

In a joint operation, Peru's armed forces and police rescued 39 people, including 26 children and 13 women, who were held by "Shining Path" rebels in the country's VRAEM area, the government announced this week.

The women captives were reportedly held at a camp and raped for the purpose of creating future rebels, while children were held in bondage until coming of age for "active duty."

"The women are made pregnant so that their babies will fill Shining Path's ranks," Deputy Defense Minister Ivan Vega told Canal N television.

"The children are trained to care for coca growing until they are 12 to 14 when they go into Shining Path active duty," Vega said.

The deputy defense minister noted that the rescued children were between the ages of one and 14, adding that some of the elderly "had been kidnaped 25 or 30 years ago."

Some 2,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a rally organized by the Israeli watchdog Peace Now, with smaller pro-tolerance marches held in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities.

Protesters held banners reading "enough incitement, enough violence" and called on the government to crack down on crimes by Israeli West Bank settlers.

The Saturday demonstrations come a day after suspected Jewish extremists set fire to a Palestinian house on the West Bank, killing a toddler in his sleep and seriously injuring his four-year-old brother and both of the parents.

The burning was preceded by another suspected hate crime, when an ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed six people at the Jerusalem gay pride parade on Thursday. One of the victims is still in critical condition.

'Flames of hatred'

"We call on the government to take strong action against the violence of the settlers and to restart immediately the peace process," Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer told the AFP news agency at the Saturday rally in Tel Aviv.

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's Kurdish regional government called on the Kurdistan Worker's Party to withdraw from Iraq's Kurdish territory Saturday to prevent civilian deaths amid a campaign of Turkish airstrikes targeting the group.

A statement from the office of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK, "should withdraw its fighters from the Kurdish region so to ensure the civilians of Kurdistan don't become victim[s] of that fighting and conflict."

The statement also condemned Turkey for bombing civilians, following reports that civilian homes were damaged in airstrikes in northwestern Iraq. The statement calls on both sides to resume peace talks.

"We condemn the bombing, which led to the martyrdom of the citizens of the Kurdish region, and we call on Turkey to not repeat the bombing of civilians," the statement added, and called upon both sides to resume a Kurdish peace process.

Sedar Sitar, an Iraq-based PKK activist, told the Associated Press that Turkish strikes destroyed at least six homes in the town of Zargel early Saturday, killing at least eight civilians and wounding 12.

An East Texas man ended up in the hospital after he fired a gun at an armadillo and the bullet bounced off the animal's back and hit the man in his face, according to news reports.

Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe told Reuters that the shooting took place on the man's property in Marietta, Tex. -- population 134 -- about 3 a.m. Thursday.

"His wife was in the house," Rowe said. "He went outside and took his .38 revolver and shot three times at the armadillo."

What drove the man to shoot at the critter? He told authorities he had seen the animal previously on the highway, which -- for reasons unexplained -- prompted him to draw his weapon and pull the trigger.

At least one of the bullets ricocheted off the animal's bony, protective shell and then struck the man in his jaw, according to Reuters.

The armadillo's condition is unknown, although one can suspect he's ROTLFMAO underneath a nearby bush...

Chomsky: Well what's called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn't really exist anywhere else -- a little bit in England -- permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society. Actually that has been believed in the past. Adam Smith for example, one of his main arguments for markets was the claim that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets would lead to perfect equality. Well, we don't have to talk about that! That kind of libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny

Six people were stabbed at Jerusalem's annual Gay Pride Parade on Thursday. The suspected attacker was identified as Yishai Schlissel, the same man behind the attack on the 2005 parade, recently released from prison.

One woman was critically wounded, Magen David Adom emergency services reported, adding that two men were moderately wounded, and another two men and a woman suffered light wounds. Magen David Adom emergency services treated the victims on the scene, and then rushed them to three different hospitals in Jerusalem.

Police confirmed that the suspected stabber is Schlissel, a Haredi man from Modiin Ilit who stabbed three participants in the 2005 Gay Pride march. He was recently released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence.

The interior ministers of Britain and France have called for a united front to tackle the deepening migrant crisis in Calais. This comes as 400 new attempts were made on Sunday to cross the Channel tunnel, police have said.

"Finding a solution to the problem of migrants who risk their lives to reach Britain, must be our absolute priority," Bernard Cazeneuve and Theresa May, respectively interior ministers of France and the UK, told Sunday daily Journal du Dimanche.

The increasing numbers of young men scaling metal fences, clambering aboard lorries and jumping onto trains in the desperate hope of reaching the land of their dreams, has become a sorry sight in recent weeks.

Cazeneuve and May acknowledged that "there was no simple solution," but have resolved to tackle the problem together.

The killing of Cecil the lion has provoked outrage worldwide, with Zimbawe's environment minister calling for the extradition of US dentist Walter Palmer.

But gold plating company Goldgenie has provided a unique way of remembering the mighty lion - by committing Cecil's image to a gold HTC One M9 to raise funds for a charity dedicated to the conservation of animals in Hwange National Park where he lived.

The £1,580 smartphone carries a likeness of Cecil engraved into its back, with the legend 'For Cecil and His Kingdom' underneath.

Greece may seek 24 billion euros in a first tranche of bailout aid from international lenders in August to prop up its banks and repay debts falling due at the ECB, a pro-government Greek newspaper said in its early Sunday editions.

Athens is now in talks with the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund to secure up to 86 billion euros ($94.48 billion) in bailout aid. It will be its third bailout since 2010.

Avgi newspaper, which is close to the leftist Syriza government, said Greek authorities expected to conclude talks with lenders by mid-August.

The first tranche of 24.36 billion would be used to channel 10 billion euros as an initial recapitalization to Greek banks, 7.16 billion euros to repay an emergency bridge loan, 3.2 billion euros toward Greek bonds held by the European Central Bank and other payments, Avgi said.

It has been estimated that Greek banks may require up to 25 billion euros to be recapitalized, a shortfall exacerbated by an outflow of deposits when a stalemate with lenders threatened Athens' place in the euro zone.

Much as I've been suggesting that G7/G10/Bilderbrg meetings should be held at some remote offshore island that just happens to have good accomodation, eg St Helena or the cook islands, with guaranteed privacy so that it can be done on the cheap.

I think that the Olympics should probably go the rounds of those few cities that have recently held it so that the facilities can be done on the cheap. I'm sure Sydney would like it on a semi-permanent basis. (London excluded cos it's already dismantled most of the facilities)

A second object - possibly a door - believed to be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 has been found washed up on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion.

The object, a metal sheet featuring Chinese symbols, was discovered by a passerby in Saint Denis, 15 miles (25km) from Saint-André, where the first piece of debris was found.

Authorities immediately cordoned off the perimeter and the object was taken away for further analysis.

The first piece of debris believed to be from the missing Boeing 777, a 2m-long movable part on the trailing edge of the wing called a flaperon, was found on Wednesday.

It is undergoing analysis in Toulouse, France, to assess whether it is from the Malaysia Airlines plane, which went missing in March last year. Malaysia Airlines said on Sunday that it had been confirmed as being from a 777 plane.

In Japan, local authorities are working pretty earnestly against liberal bicycle parking, especially around stations, central streets. "No bicycle parking" signs are everywhere, and they "collect" the bicycles (and ask you to pick up for a fee) quite regurlarly. It is the matter of showing you, frugal chumpo, your status.